Gocalsend

An implementation of the localsend protocol in go. The gclsnd binary has only the cli logic, the gocalsend binary supports both cli and tui mode.

The actual parameters might still change in the future.

Usage

Discover Peers

Use gclsnd --cmd=ls to discover peers.

gclsnd --cmd=ls --lstime=4

The lstime parameter is optional and specifies how long to wait for peers to respond.

Send a File

After having found the alias of the peer you want to send your files to, use gclsnd --cmd=send to send them.

gclsnd --cmd=send --peer=<your peer alias here> <file1> <file2> <file3>

Instead of --cmd=send you could also use the short form '--cmd=snd'. Gotta save those characters.

Receive Files

Use gclsnd --cmd=receive to wait for incoming files from peers on the network.

gclsnd --cmd=receive

Gocalsend accepts all incoming sessions right now and saves their files to the base download folder. To change where the files go, use the --out=<path> flag. If you need gocalsend to use a different port use the --port=1234 flag. The default port is 53317 as used by the localsend reference implementation.

gclsnd --cmd=receive --out=<path> --port=53320

Instead of receive you may also pass rcv, rec or recv to save some time. If you really want to save time then don't pass any command, to receive files is the default behavior.

Encryption

gocalsend uses a rsa 2048 bit privte key as that is what the localsend reference implementation does. Per default, gocalsend generates certificates in the config folder if they don't already exist If you want to use your own certificate you will have to specify where the cert and its key are stored, either via flags or in the config file.

gclsnd --cert=<path/to/cert> --key=<path/to/key>

Logging

The log level can be set to one of either none, debug or info.

gocalsend --loglevel=debug

The none log level will be implemented soon^TM

Help

gocalsend --help

Configuration

The configuration file is stored in the xdg config folder. If this environment variable is unset this location defaults to $HOME/.config/ on unix based systems or %appdata% on windows. When first running gocalsend the program will create a new folder called gocalsend in this directory. Within that folder you will find a file called config.toml as well as the tls certificate and key. The keys of the configuration file are not yet final, which is indicated by the version number 0 in the config file. Command line flags always take precedence over values from the config file. The --config flag can be used to supply a different configuration.

Building

Building requires make and the go compiler. If you are running windows you can use GnuMake32. Run for a release build:

make release

The resulting binary is build/release/gocalsend. The default build is in release mode, so you could also just run make. For a development build with debug symbols and a bunch of odd test binaries:

make debug

Related work

• protocol Protocol documentation

Libraries

• charmbracelet/log A slog compatible pretty logger
• charmbracelet/bubbletea Awesome terminal ui framework
• charmbracelet/bubbles Useful stylable components
• charmbracelet/lipgloss CSS like styling for bubbletea
• go-toml toml parsing

Alternative implementations

If your implementation is missing here, let me know

• localsend The reference implementation
• localsend-rs Awesome rust tui
• go-localsend An alternative go implementation, check the docs folder for the english readme